> The outlet was stuck in the wall box so I reached a flathead screwdriver in to try and pry it out, and turned my screwdriver into an arc welder for a second.
I've got a screwdriver that incorporates a non-contact AC current sensor. Mine is a Gardner Bender SDT-354 [1] that I think I bought at Home Depot or Lowe's.
When the current sensor is turned on if you bring the tip of the screwdriver near a live AC wire an LED in the handle starts rapidly blinking and a beeper starts rapidly beeping.
It once may have saved me from a nasty shock. I have an outdoor light over the garage that is controlled by a light sensor, and the light sensor was going bad. It would turn the light on when it got dark but not turn it off in the morning. So I'd flip the breaker for that light off and then back on every morning.
When morning when I went to open the electrical panel in the garage I got a shock from the panel door. I went in and got the current sensing screwdriver and went back to the garage to see if I could get an idea of what the heck was going on.
As soon as I stepped into the garage the screwdriver started blinking and beeping. A little experimenting showed it would go off anywhere in the front half of the garage that was more than about a meter above the floor.
It turned out that the metal garage doors and the metal rails their rollers rolled on and the metal tracks the garage door openers pulled the doors on were all connected to live AC.
I got the fuck out of there and called an electrician.
What happened was that in the shed next to the garage that houses my well some critter had chewed through some of the insulation on some of the wiring for powering the well pump. I'm not sure how but that somehow made the cover and door of the electrical panel and all those metal parts of my garage door system electrified, but without stopping the well pump from receiving power.
Yeah I have the standalone tool and it's a must-have for electric work. While replacing some switches in my house I thought I had the right breaker (sidenote: those breaker-detector tools are like magic, much better than the "is the light still on?" method). The lights went out but when I jammed my tester in the gang box it started beeping. I ended up needing to flip off 2 breakers (took me a while to find the second one) before it finally stopped beeping. From that moment on I promised myself that no matter how "sure" I was, I would ALWAYS stick the tester in before reaching in, even if I hadn't touched the breaker box between working on a switch.
I've been bitten enough times in software alone by things I was "sure" about, I don't take any chances when it comes to electricity.
An important habit when using testers: test the tester first on a known live wire. You don't want to find out the hard way if your tester has stopped working.
It's not necessarily that the handle is conductive after all (it likely isn't, but there are conductive polymers out there -- I've made some in Chemistry class), but rather that it hasn't been tested and certified for its insulating properties (e.g. the VDE 1000V classification). They're covering their ass by saying that it's not intended to be an insulating handle because they didn't design it to be.
I've got a screwdriver that incorporates a non-contact AC current sensor. Mine is a Gardner Bender SDT-354 [1] that I think I bought at Home Depot or Lowe's.
When the current sensor is turned on if you bring the tip of the screwdriver near a live AC wire an LED in the handle starts rapidly blinking and a beeper starts rapidly beeping.
It once may have saved me from a nasty shock. I have an outdoor light over the garage that is controlled by a light sensor, and the light sensor was going bad. It would turn the light on when it got dark but not turn it off in the morning. So I'd flip the breaker for that light off and then back on every morning.
When morning when I went to open the electrical panel in the garage I got a shock from the panel door. I went in and got the current sensing screwdriver and went back to the garage to see if I could get an idea of what the heck was going on.
As soon as I stepped into the garage the screwdriver started blinking and beeping. A little experimenting showed it would go off anywhere in the front half of the garage that was more than about a meter above the floor.
It turned out that the metal garage doors and the metal rails their rollers rolled on and the metal tracks the garage door openers pulled the doors on were all connected to live AC.
I got the fuck out of there and called an electrician.
What happened was that in the shed next to the garage that houses my well some critter had chewed through some of the insulation on some of the wiring for powering the well pump. I'm not sure how but that somehow made the cover and door of the electrical panel and all those metal parts of my garage door system electrified, but without stopping the well pump from receiving power.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Alert-Blade-Screw-Driver/dp/B...